Who Is Mark Carney, Canada’s Next Prime Minister

The exact time he will be become prime minister has yet to be determined, with Trudeau saying last week that a transition period will be necessary.

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney speaks to reporters at the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., on Sept. 10, 2024. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

Former central banker Mark Carney has won the Liberal leadership race and will become prime minister after a transition is ironed out with outgoing leader Justin Trudeau.

Carney bested two former cabinet members and a former Liberal MP in a campaign that had little drama between candidates as they focused their criticism on U.S. President Donald Trump and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Carney received the most endorsements from the Liberal cabinet and caucus, and greatly surpassed his opponents in fundraising.

The exact time he will be become prime minister has yet to be determined, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying last week that a transition period will be necessary.

Trudeau announced his intention to resign in early January as he faced mounting pressure to step down after Chrystia Freeland, who finished a distant second in the leadership race, resigned from cabinet in December.

Carney will become a rare, unelected prime minister, having never run for office and positioning himself as a political “outsider” before officially launching his campaign.

He’s also the only prime minister to hold two other citizenships, being a citizen of both England and Ireland. John Turner before him, who briefly served in 1984, had British citizenship. Carney said in late February he has begun the process of renouncing his other citizenships.

Central Bank Governor, Executive Positions

The son of teachers, Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and grew up in Edmonton.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard (1988) and a Masters (1993) and doctorate in the same field from Oxford (1995).

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, seen here in Nanaimo, B.C., on Oct. 15, 2012. The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito

He started his career in the private sector, before becoming a public servant and moving up to become the governor of the Bank of Canada (BoC) from 2007 to 2013. After leaving the BoC in 2013, he served as governor of the Bank of England until 2020.

After leaving that role, he served on a number of boards and held executive roles in the private sector, and became heavily involved in net-zero emissions initiatives.

Among these roles have been executive or board membership positions with financial corporations Brookfield Asset Management, Stripe, PIMCO, and international organizations or charities such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations Climate Action and Finance.

Carney has said he resigned from all these positions before launching his leadership bid in January. The Conservatives have criticized him for being part of Brookfield Asset Management when the company moved its headquarters from Canada to the United States. Carney initially said the move in late 2004 “happened after I ceased to be on the board,” but later said he should have been more “precise” in his answer after a letter showed him speaking of the move while he was still chair of the company.

Net-Zero Advocacy

Carney has been a strong advocate of climate change policies and transitioning away from hydrocarbons.

He co-led the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero which formed during the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. The group composed of top global financial institutions seeking to mobilize capital to decarbonize the economy continued to grow until the election of Trump last November.

Its sub-group, the Net Zero Banking Alliance set up by Carney, has since been unravelling, with the biggest U.S. banks pulling out, followed by all major Canadian banks earlier this year.

Carney commented on the topic when he did his soft campaign launch on the “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart on Jan. 14.

Mark Carney makes a keynote address to launch the private finance agenda for the 2020 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) at Guildhall in London, England, on Feb. 27, 2020. Tolga Akmen/WPA Pool/Getty Images

“As soon as these big banks got a hold that Donald Trump was going to be back in office, they all bailed,” Stewart said. “They all bailed on all these commitments that they made, and you’re left, in some ways, holding the carbon tax bag. Is that going to make your running more difficult?”

Carney has remained committed to his net-zero emissions view, but has said he’ll remove the unpopular consumer-facing carbon tax as prime minister and replace it with an incentives program, and instead put the cost on major businesses.

“But we need to do it in a way that Canadians today are not paying the price,” he told Stewart.

Adviser to Liberals

Carney had been informally advising Trudeau on the COVID-19 economic response beginning shortly after the pandemic started in 2020.

He became a formal adviser to the Liberal Party in September 2024.

Reports emerged a few months later that the Liberals were planning to replace then-Finance Minister Freeland with Carney.

Freeland resigned from cabinet on Dec. 16 after being notified by Trudeau that she was being shuffled from her position, a move that led to many caucus members to publicly call for Trudeau’s ouster as leader, which ultimately resulted in his Jan. 6 announcement that he planned to resign once a new leader has been selected.

On Dec. 19, senior cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc was asked if moving Carney to the finance ministry was still in the cards. “Carney is not an option,“ he replied. ”That discussion has concluded.”

Policies

Carney has said he will focus on reducing government spending and only take on debt if it helps to grow the economy. He has also said he’ll reduce taxes for the middle class, and remove international trade barriers.

On housing, he said he plans to allocate funding on new technologies to speed up completion times, focus on “unlocking private risk capital” to build new homes, and cut red tape.

His plan also has strong emphasis on climate change policies.

On the cultural side, he has said he values “inclusiveness.”

“While America engages in a war on woke, Canadians will continue to value inclusiveness,” he said on the campaign trail.

During his campaign, he said his response to the U.S. tariffs will include “dollar-for-dollar” retaliatory tariffs on items that are most damaging to the United States, and said he'll also work to boost investment and support for workers in Canada. He has also said Canada needs to diversify its trading relationships.